And use you for its own ugly ends.“
“I think it’s already begun,” he admitted cautiously.
“Bullshit.” Cassie smoothed out her needlework and picked up a skein of yellow thread. “You’re scaring yourself. Searching your soul for bogey-men. So you have a temper. So your body has been trained as an effective weapon and steps in to save you’when your mind is out to lunch. Maybe you even have a few kinks that the right person can trigger with the right sort of behavior. Well, don’t we all? Don’t blame the gray thing or the magic. Don’t even blame Lynda. though she sounds like she could piss off a saint. Blame yourself. You set it all in motion.”
“Meaning what?” He demanded. He didn’t like the way this was going. Not matter what he said, Cassie seemed to circle back to where it was all his fault. But she couldn’t know what it was really like. She hadn’t been there.
“You deliberately unbalanced your magic. When Lynda came to you on the bench that day, she had a problem. You listened to her, but you didn’t tell her what you Knew. Nor did you turn her away. You kept what you Knew to yourself, like it was some ponderous secret. Hell, even I could have told her the answer. I would have said, ‘Lynda, it’s fine to like men, any number of men, as long as you still like yourself.’ But you didn’t. So you owed her, and she became a danger to you. Mir has used her as a channel to get to you- Hell, didn’t you wonder at a waitress that could jump up to a bar and chin herself up to a fire escape? Mir used her to move you away from the rest of us, to get you out on your own. But even though the magic was unbalanced when you didn’t give more than you got, it didn’t go away. Didn’t you Know that Booth would follow and attack?”
“It wasn’t me same. I couldn’t feed the pigeons.”
“Did you try?”
“She took the fucking bag!” he roared in sudden exasperation. “What was I supposed to do? Make popcorn appear out of nowhere?”
“Exactly. Did you try?”
“No!” he snapped. “I just knew I couldn’t. And you can’t shrug it off like it’s nothing when I say that I’ve been hurting people. I had stopped doing that.”
“I know. Because you didn’t need to. Who did you hurt?
A mugger? A murderer? A man who attacked you from behind?“
“And Lynda. And I hurt them all more than I needed to.”
Cassie shook her head. “You hurt them as much as you had to, to make them stop what they were doing. In the case of the knife-man, not quite enough. And Lynda? Lynda is like a rat pushing a bar to cam a feed pellet. She sized you up right away without even being conscious of it. She can push your buttons and you give her a little scare that puts an edge on things If you wens really a danger to her. do you think she’d stick around? She was already smart enough to dump one man that got too rough. You’re the key to the candy store for her. She sets the scenes and you say your lines. While the gray thing uses her to undermine you.”
“You don’t understand anything!” He rose so suddenly that he nearly upset the lamp. Fists clenched, he paced the room twice and stopped in front of her chair. “It’s different for me.
Maybe you can never understand. I don’t just lose my temper and slug someone. I Know what I am capable of, in a way most people never realize. I’ve killed, Cassie, with a rifle and with my hands. And I’m good at it. Very good. So good that when I am crossed, it’s the first solution I think of, not the last. And Lynda. I don’t like what she triggers in me, what she makes me want to do to her.“
Cassie shrugged easily. “Then get away from her. Find someone else. But don’t blame it on the magic.”
He shook his head. It was so simple for her. And so hard for him. “I’m a violent man.”
“You are also a man sickened by violence. A man triggered by violence to violence. Do you suppose I am so different? If I saw a mugging in progress, do you mink I would turn away?
If I were attacked, wouldn’t I defend myself? Wizard, there is only one rule about violence. Do whatever you must do to make it stop.“
He was so far beyond what she could imagine. It made her seem vulnerable and young as be told her, “I can’t agree with that.”
“I can’t make you. I can’t force you to believe that the magic hasn’t deserted you, either. And because of that, you just may the.”
His eyes snapped to her face. She suddenly looked very old. He crossed the room to her and sat at her feet, looking up at her. There was something in her eyes he knew. “Were you in Viet Nam?” he asked suddenly.
“My friend, I have been in them all since the wooden horse was dragged into Troy. They haven’t unproved them any.”
“Viet Nam was the worst.”
“It was different,” she agreed. She leaned her cheek on her fist and looked at him sadly. “Do you know, since I met you, I haven’t eaten a pigeon.”
He was touched. “Don’t look so sad. I feel like you’re saying last words to me. I’ve listened to you, I really have- I’m going to go back and get it all straightened out. It’s going to be alt right.”
“Fool,” she said fondly. “The time I can shelter you here is ticking away. Then I must put you out, back into the streets.
And Mir will have you. Tonight. This is the night it takes you away.“
“I’m not ready.” His mouth was dry. “You threw away your weapons to pretend there was no war.”
“Cassie, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to get yourself killed. And maybe take down the rest of us as well.” She slid forward off her chair to sit on the floor beside him. “Why didn’t I ever see what a child you are?”
“I’m not.”
“You don’t think so, perhaps.” Her fingers traced the pattern on the nig. “But when did you really have the chance to grow up? You were just a kid when they took you. And when you came back, you were older than God, but without the wisdom.
Only the knowing. Not adults, but wizards. You and Rasputin and Euripides. The difference is they found themselves sooner, and have put in enough time to do some growing. You’re not going to have the chance.“
Her words were chilling. He wrapped himself in bravado, leaning back against her chair as he spoke. “And just what makes you so different, then?” ‘
“Me? I remember the befores.” Soft as a challenge, those words.
A silence fell. Meaning hummed in me words sinking into the quiet, but Wizard could not quite extract it. He only knew it had immense importance to him. It dangled tantalizingly out of his reach. There were only Cassie’s eyes begging him to pick up on it. He shook his head at her. “So what should I do?”
“Pick up your weapons. Call out the allies you’ve groomed for this battle. Stop pretending that you’ve been pretending.”
She was talking in riddles. Despair washed over him. “ don’t know how. I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you want me to do.”
‘The I-Don’t-Know Wizard.“ There was no mockery in her voice. She leaned forward to put her hand against his cheek.
The touch of her skin against his tingled, like an exchange of electricity. It was both heady and familiar. Yet he could not recall that she had ever touched him before. He found himself leaning into it. moving his face against her hand.
“Why can’t you just tell me?” he begged in frustration, and was surprised at his own words.
“I’ve tried, in every way that I’m allowed. Don’t you think ay magic has its own rules?” A fierce edge to her voice.
That stopped him cold. “Oh. Then there’s nothing left but for it to happen. I suppose I should leave now.”
“I suppose.” Her hand fell from his face. She picked up both of his hands in hers and looked at them, as if marveling at their emptiness. A tear fell into his hand and the wet touch galvanized him.
“Don’t. Please, don’t. I never wanted to make you sad.”
“You never wanted to make me anything!” she accused suddenly in an anguished voice. She pushed suddenly into his arms and he found himself holding her. She smelled like spices, ginger and vanilla. Closing his eyes, he pulled her closer. She pressed her face into the side of his neck and her arms clung to him. Startled, he loosened his hold. She didn’t. He patted her awkwardly. Her voice came from the hollow of his shoulder, sounding below his ear. “Do you remember the first story ever told you?”
He cast his mind back. “No. There have been so many.